In Double Dragon brothers Billy and Jimmy Lee fight a gang
called the Black Warriors
in order to rescue Marion. If playing the game Co-op, after beating the final
boss you are forced into single combat with your brother over the affections of
said female.
No game had ever put me in the position, I was eight years
old and had no concept of how to respond when shit gets real.
While processing this new information player 2 beat me to death with a pipe.
In the beginning of the game Marion got punched in the
stomach and dragged away. We were two guys out there who saw this happen, and
decided to do something about it instead of letting it slide. Were we not there
to save a friend? Wouldn’t we have done the same for anyone? Couldn’t we go
somewhere and talk this out?
After he went home I sat on the porch until nightfall,
thinking about what happened. He was my boy, road
dog, mi hermano. We had fought together. So many Abobo’s, so many team up
attacks.
The next day at baseball practice I would be fielding
grounders and the scene would flash in my mind of Jimmy in his matching red
leather pants vest, no undershirt; beating me senseless while Marian stood in
the periphery clutching her pearls, awakened by the violence.
That night I sat indian style in the laundry room staring at
the dryer, surrounded by the spent casings of Capri suns and Lunchables. I knew
Mom would be pissed when she found out I consumed a weeks worth of lunch
fixins. Didn’t care. God was a lie and nothing mattered.
Wart, Pimple, and Zitz didn’t have a friendship, it was an
arrangement. April O' Neil was gonna break Raph's heart. If
Luigi died, would Mario even show up to the funeral?
I dubbed that event “The Betrayal of the Dragon,”
and swore a silent pact of vengeance on the kid. Without getting into litigious
details, in later days that kid paid a real world price in blood and fire. He
claimed not to remember what the hell I was talking about, but he knew.
Nevertheless the event distorted my views on relationships
and left me a broken, cynical, husk of a man whose deep seeded intimacy issues
all share the common point of origin.
Anyway, I’m over it. Time marches as time do, it’s all goodie. I’m chill. Psh… So dumb… Yeah so Double Dragon is a great game and you should check it out. I hope information realizes it’s about games, and everybody should get to play. You know where I stand on the topic, if you have any questions, come see me. Also, JERBZ.
